Edwards Taps His Family Roots

For North Carolina Senator, Born In South Carolina, Winning Here Is Critical To His Strategy

February 03, 2004|By JANICE D'ARCY; Courant Staff Writer

SENECA, S.C. — The little metal-roofed house where Sen. John Edwards was born 50 years ago still stands, perched on a crooked hill. It is now weather-worn and pink, used mostly as storage by the family who owns it.

It is about halfway down a block that on one side is bordered by a dilapidated mobile home with a rusty front yard that holds a sturdy flagpole flying a Confederate flag. On the other side, the block where Edwards was born is crossed by a road named, of all things, Hope.

For Edwards, a candidate who has staked his legitimacy on his southerness, the imagery here is as rich as the pecan pie.

As Hope, Ark., was to Bill Clinton, Plains, Ga., was to Jimmy Carter and the Texas Hill Country was to Lyndon B. Johnson, Seneca is the spiritual center to Edwards' campaign.

``The people in this room know the South is not George Bush's backyard,'' he said in a hoarse over-speeched voice before his family, his parents and a few hundred raucous locals who gathered in the town's Institute Family Life Center. ``The South is my backyard.''

With today's first-in-the-South Democratic primary vote, South Carolina voters will decide if the North Carolina senator has successfully framed himself as the candidate who can untie the political dichotomies of his roots. Or if he has used those roots to politically strangle himself.

The outcome may also begin to get at the larger strategic question posed this campaign season by Democrats: Is the South worth the effort?

``He needs to win here, no doubt about it,'' said Merle Black, an expert on Southern politics who wrote, ``The Vital South; How Presidents are Elected.''

Winning South Carolina is a necessity that even Edwards acknowledges. He has spent too long describing himself as the best candidate to lure the recently Democratic adverse swing states in the South to lose his native state.

It is why he has predominantly spent this crucial week before today's seven-state battery of primaries and caucuses, in South Carolina. And it's why he spent the final hours before the polls open, traveling to this little northwestern corner that he so often references in stump speeches as his hometown.

In fact, this town does have examples to lend credence to his claim -- ``I have lived this'' when he speaks of middle-America's struggle.

The ornate brick buildings of downtown are half-empty. The textile mill that anchored the Edwardses' old neighborhood is now closed and dark. There are one-room shacks up toward the dump on the west side of town and public housing just beyond downtown.

There are also enough cutesy shops, such as the Ye Olde Sandwich Shoppe, and rows of well-manicured homes to provide a picturesque backdrop for his campaign slogans.

But inside those shacks and apartments and homes, there may not be enough Democrats. Seneca lies in the heart of the state's Republican territory. The local GOP headquarters in a storefront on the main drag has more visual prominence than any hometown-boy-done-good Edwards paraphernalia.

Though Edwards doesn't address it much on the stump, the Republican infiltration of his roots are both an underlying theme of his campaign and of today's vote.

Ever since President Bush's sweep of Southern states in the 2000 election, some prominent Democratic strategists have suggested giving up on the South to instead spend resources on swing states in other parts of the country. The theory goes that the Southern states will be impossible for Democrats to win against a sitting president with his own Southern roots.

It is a strategy to which Edwards is adamantly opposed. ``I am the candidate who can beat George Bush in the North, in the West, in the Midwest,'' he has said repeatedly this week before delivering the drawled-out-punchline, ``and talking like this, I can beat him in the South.''

To prove that he can, Edwards will need to win this state today. The task may actually be easier than just winning the votes of his old neighbors in Seneca.

On Monday night, a few moments before Edwards' caravan was scheduled to roll through town, a waitress at the sandwich shop asked ``Now tell me, who is John Edwards?''

Another resident who was at the rally, Louise Bell, a retired writer who is friendly with the extended Edwards clan said that she, for one, is supporting him. ``I am,'' she said. ``I am a Republican for Edwards.''